faderift | open | if every constellation above us has a counterpart below.

WHO: Stephen Strange & you
WHAT: yet another new rifter arrival
WHEN: nowish and throughout his quarantine period
WHERE: Around the Gallows
NOTES: Catch-all spot for the month and to continue TDM arrival threads; feel free to tag in tho!

arrival (a variety of prompts).

It begins as an anxiety dream.

He’s experienced no end of nightmares about no end of trauma, but this time the stakes are banal: Doctor Strange is dressed sharply in a formal suit with a scarlet pocket square, giving a speech at a medical conference, standing at a podium staring at the hundreds of faces staring back at him, and finding that his iron-trap memory has suddenly failed and he’s forgotten his entire damned speech. It’s almost a relief when the enormous tentacled eyeball monster barges into the conference center, sending people screaming and scattering, and just as the Cloak of Levitation reappears around his shoulders, Strange finds himself —

somewhere else —

What ensues is a disorienting battle on the outskirts of Orlais, with a rifter appearing in anachronistic formalwear and a red cloak gone inanimate, with a conference lanyard hanging around his neck and a little adhesive nametag (‘DR. STEPHEN STRANGE, MD, PHD, NEW YORK METRO-GENERAL HOSPITAL’ now rendered in Thedan script). And in the fight, Strange realises that almost none of his magic behaves as he expects it to. It’s not the first time he’s found himself unexpectedly dumped in another universe, but this is the first time his own capabilities have failed him. Even after the battle ends, wraiths banished and his dream-monster killed, he keeps trying to light a spark of fire between his hands and finding it more difficult than it ought to be. On the carriage ride back to Kirkwall, with both him and the Riftwatch agents covered in horrid black ichor and gore from the eyeball monster’s innards, at least Strange has the decency to look a little sheepish while the other agents scrutinise him.

“Done this sort of reception a lot?” he asks, lightly, while he keeps unconsciously kneading at his left palm. His hand aches. This is normal. What isn’t normal is the green shard embedded in it like some kind of ethereal splinter, and it makes the usual pain in his scarred hands even worse.

Afterwards, during his quarantine, he can be found in the library at all hours, surrounded by stacks of books, devouring them even late into the night – he’s an avaricious student, and wants to learn everything about his new circumstances. He breaks the polite silence when a glob of hot wax from a candle lands on his wrist, and he curses with a sudden sharp “Oh, what the fuck.”

Strange goes for long walks around the Gallows. You might literally run into him where he’s crouched in a hallway in the lower levels, examining the cleansing runes embedded in the floor which prevent the growth of red lyrium, puzzling over the clearly-magical symbols, feeling that faint hum of magic in the back of his teeth. “Do you happen to know what these do?”

He also inevitably winds up poking his head into the infirmary, morbidly curious; one might walk in on him peering through the bottles of potions and jars of dried herbs, and surveying the surgical tools with a thoughtful little hm in the back of his throat.

wildcard.

feel free to toss me anything (late-night insomnia wandering the halls? new dorm roommates? mealtime in the dining hall?) and i’ll roll with it! or hmu @ quadrille to confab. i’ll match prose or brackets.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Clarisse is taking in his explanation, nodding. A sorcerer, okay. Magic, she's familiar with that. She's got a bit of her own—less now than before she fell through the rift, but still enough to consider herself pretty capable.

So... not just a doctor, then. His story sounds more like something out of her world than she expected.

And his question makes her laugh. "Uh... undeclared?"

Not that his question matters anymore, really; those shreds of normalcy like midterms and exams are far away, left behind in another universe entirely. But Strange still gives a rueful smile at her laugh. “I guess it’s ‘punching demons in the face’ now, whatever it would’ve been before.”

Down the hall, a harried servant passes by the pair, having to squeeze past them in the corridor while lugging a couple heavy pails of water. Strange steps back against the wall and out of the way. Aware, then, that he should probably stop clogging up the hallways and monopolising this girl’s time when all she’d done was almost trip over him for it.

“Alright. Figure I should probably let you get going — I think it’s almost mealtime — but it was nice to meet you, Clarisse. I expect we’ll be seeing each other around on assignments, anyway.”

"I like punching demons," Clarisse says with a shrug. It's fine with her if she never goes back to school. (Going back home, well, that's another thing.)

She steps back to let the servant pass by, leaning up against the opposite wall from Strange, and nods at his assessment that a) she should probably go, because b) it's almost mealtime. She is hungry.

"Okay. See you around, Doc." She gives him a little salute as she turns to continue on her way.

open | if every constellation above us has a counterpart below.

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poss yours to wrap?

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